After months of rumors and trying to guess what WWE might be doing, it's official now: WWE Smackdown is moving back to Thursday nights. In an article on Variety.com, it was announced that Syfy will be moving the show from Fridays back to its originally Thursday at 8pm timeslot and it will remain a two hour show. It will still be taped on Tuesday nights on a regular basis because it would be too expensive to tape it live every week. The start date for the move will be January 15, 2015. That will probably be a huge edition of Smackdown loaded with stars because WWE will want to get people used to the show on the new night. It was announced in the article that there will be an official announcement on Thursday as well. The article features this statement from Michael Engleman, who is an executive VP, marketing, digital and global brand strategy for Syfy: "Quite simply, more young men watch television on Thursday night than on Fridays. The majority of broadcast programming (skewing) female, were also using Thursday nights to counter program." Michelle Wilson, WWE's chief revenue and marketing officer pointed out WWE's success on Syfy: WWEs sizable and passionate fan base make SmackDown the No. 1 entertainment show on Syfy and the most-watched, regularly-scheduled program among key demographics on the network. We look forward to bringing the WWE audience to Thursday nights on Syfy. Any time corporations do press releases they tend to blow a lot of smoke, but in this case it makes sense. The reason for the move is because more people are watching television on Thursday nights. They moved to Fridays initially to try to win that night on cable TV and they usually did that. However, it's better to be on Thursdays instead of Fridays even with the added competition. Smackdown started on Thursday nights with the first regular episode airing on August 29, 1999. They did a test episode four months before that to see what the numbers would be like. They moved to Fridays in 2005 with the tagline "TV that's changing Friday nights." We had no idea that they would be on Fridays for nearly 10 years, but that's what happened. Since WWE signed the new TV deal with NBC Universal this move was expected with even some rumors suggesting it might go live on Tuesday nights. That's not happening. A few months ago there was a WWE production truck that said Smackdown would be on Thursdays at 8. WWE said it was just an error. This was when WWE re-signed with USA Network and Syfy, so people just assumed that as part of the new deal they would move the show. Instead of moving it in the fall, they're doing it in January. That's a smart business move because the NFL regular season has Thursday night games from September through the end of December, so WWE didn't want to compete with that. Next September they will, but that will be after 9 months of getting fans used to Smackdown on Thursdays. http://youtu.be/jePYnPDpx_w It's a smart move for WWE business wise. More people watching Smackdown is better for the company as well as their WWE Network, which needs more subscribers. The next thing WWE has to do is try to build up Smackdown to be an important brand again with major events happening. It really hasn't felt that way for about four years when they stopped doing the brand extension. There were times in 2002-03 and 2009 where Smackdown was clearly superior to Raw thanks to better angles and consistently good matches. It's not like that anymore. It's not seen as a must see show. The timing of the move is good too. Wrestling fans start thinking about WWE more in January with the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania. Now it's up to WWE to impress us by making Smackdown matter once again.
John wrote at WhatCulture from December 2013 to December 2015. It was fun, but it's over for now. Follow him on Twitter @johnreport. You can also send an email to mrjohncanton@gmail.com with any questions or comments as well.
